


not cold, yet still brittle

by Anonymous



Series: a moment, prompted [4]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Grief, Missing Scene, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:46:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26549206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Hornet has a moment.
Series: a moment, prompted [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2186166
Comments: 1
Kudos: 36
Collections: Anonymous, Unofficial FFA Anon Collection





	not cold, yet still brittle

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to FFA for the prompt "100 words of stoic characters crying"

Hornet held on until the little Ghost had disappeared all the way down the twisting halls out to the cavern before she broke.

The empty plinth behind her filled her with an aching like she'd been envenomed and left to rot, consumed and broken down from the inside until nothing but her shell remained. Mother had been living on stolen time in her dreaming, and neither had ever been able to forget that, but understanding could do nothing to blunt the fresh grief that stabbed at her from within.

The smooth stone surface bore no trace of a body save for darker spaces where the dust and debris failed to coat it, outlining the shadow her mother's presence left behind. All else that remained of her -- her mask, her veil, her broad abdomen and many limbs -- had been cleanly erased. There would be no flesh to be consumed or returned to the soft earth, nor carapace to decorate her shrine. Even her mourners had abandoned her by now, all thralled and tangled in the light or returned to lands where Hornet could not follow.

And yet, as always, a sense of deluded falsehood to it: like how her sleeping form once still breathed as if any moment she might wake, even now Mother's needle still stood leaning against the far wall, dulled with age and twice Hornet's height, waiting for her mother to come back and retrieve it after her departure on some journey unseen. Her silks hung as they always had from the walls of the shrine-to-be; her spiraling loom sat disused, but left strung with red-dyed thread from an idle project Hornet had been too young to remember.

Not for the first time, she wondered what it must have been like for Mother, to live each hour knowing that at any moment, she might be called to abandon the world of the waking for the duty-bound eternity of her agreement. What must it have been like, to know any word she spoke to someone might be her last?

A horrible little sound, wild and wounded, tore from her throat.

She used to think she wouldn't cry. Mother was already gone, and Hornet needed no foresight to see that she would never wake. As the vessel in the temple weakened, so would Mother and the other dreamers, until all would be lost. It was not her duty to save them. It was not the little Ghost's duty either.

The metal edge of Hornet's own needle bit into the joints of her claws; she must have adjusted her grip too carelessly, to let it harm her. The choked cry that forced itself free bore no relation to the pain, nearly unfelt beneath the weight of uncountable years, of grieving and silence and waiting, always waiting, for an end so distant she still struggled to comprehend it even when it lay behind her, in a bed with no dreamer to fill it.

(And it was never a bed. The weavers did not sleep on stone slabs, they slept in hammocks and silks, on walls and in little corners. It was an altar, and it bore a sacrifice; her complacency and self-deception had done her no favors when the time came.

What a foolish thing, to blind herself so. What a wonder the Old Light had not taken her sooner.)

A pale face caught the corner of her blurring vision, out-of-place amid the dark. The candles had all snuffed themselves out when the body dissolved, as if her mother's very life had sustained them, leaving the dim glow of a lantern unmistakable.

"I said to leave, little Ghost." She curled her legs closer to herself and buried her chin in the collar of her cloak, not caring how obvious she was in trying to hide her face. "I need no reminders of your deed. Know that my sorrow breeds no weakness. I'll not fall to your nail, should you seek to take advantage of my grief."

The little creature only stared back at her, blank as ever, for a long empty moment before it left. She took a shaking breath, as shallow and quiet as she could manage, and listened as the faint patter of footsteps faded away once more.

Alone again, already fraying at the seams, she wept like a child for the first time since Mother had left.

* * *

There was a flower on the doorstep. She nearly missed it, following the familiar path down to the lower floor, past the discarded masks and the remains of the broken bench she'd seen on the way in. Whoever had left it had done so with utmost care; it sat on a small pile of gathered cobwebs and fabric scraps like an improvised cushion, and she suspected from its delicate structure that even a careless tug would shear the silk-soft petals from the stem.

She watched a shape retreat through the tunnels from the village she had once called home, and wondered if it understood apologies.


End file.
